Review of Wizard 101 - Online Game

My kids and I have been playing Wizard 101 for a couple of weeks now. Wizard 101 is an online adventure game for kids and families. In the game, you are a student at wizard school and you are trying to help save Wizard City. To start, you get to create your character - you choose how you look, how you are dressed, and select a name. You can also take a little quiz to see which school of magic is best for you. Then
you go to the school meet the headmasters and teachers and are sent on quests to learn skills and get new spells and equipment. You complete in battles using spell cards (These remind me of pokemon or Yu-Gi-Oh cards).

Many areas of the game are free to play. There is a subscription fee to be able to get to some areas of the game. The game is rated E+10 for “mild fantasy violence and crude humor”. There is cartoon violence during the battles (but even the skeletal pirates are cute). Most battle spells create a cartoon animal (such as a Lightning Snake, a Unicorn, or a FireCat) that appears and blasts the enemy with sparkles or magic clouds. As far as the crude humor,the only thing we have come across so far is a Humongofrog spell that barfs green slime when it’s spell is cast.

So far, my kids are really enjoying the game. My 8-year-old especially loves it (yeah, I know . . . rated E10, but I’m playing it with him and it’s been fine so far).  And it’s been great incentive to encourage him to get things done. “Yep, you can play wizard101 right after your homework is done.” And I like that it has been encouraging him to use math and budgeting. In the game, you can “earn” gold and “buy” new clothes and pets and furniture items for your room. He is “earning” gold and “saving” it in order to buy things. He’s currently keeping track of out how much more "money" he needs to get a firecat as a pet. Just the other day he decided that he would have to stop buying other things if he ever wants to save enough for a firecat.

The graphics are very cool. They have created a great online would to explore around.  There is a great help guide and help during the game from characters that offer tips and advice as you need it. There’s even an arrow that shows you what direction to go for the quest that you are on.  Kids can use chat to interact with other players.  There are levels of chat from menu chat where kids only choose phrases to open chat where kids can type what they want to say. 

Another thing that I think is really neat is that the website has a section in the Wizard Community area for artwork and stories about the game characters that kids can send it: https://www.wizard101.com/game/community

You can try it at: http://www.wizard101.com/   Oh, and if you see a wizard in a cute pink dress and cape named Fiona Willowbright say hi to me.

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